Rethinking Entrepreneurship at 35: Why India Needs a New Economic Mindset After 1991

January, named after the Roman god Janus who looks both backward and forward, is an apt moment to reflect on India’s economic journey. As the country marks 35 years of the 1991 economic reforms, the balance sheet is mixed. The reforms were undeniably transformative — yet deeply incomplete. While India and China had similar per-capita incomes in 1991, China’s is now nearly five times higher. This divergence forces a difficult question: if India could build the world’s largest democracy against immense social odds, why did it fall behind economically?

What 1991 changed — and what it did not

The achievements of the 1991 reforms are substantial. Vehicle ownership has multiplied 45 times, Provident Fund contributions 75 times, foreign exchange reserves 120 times, stock market capitalisation 500 times, and phone connections an astonishing 600 times. These numbers reflect liberalisation’s success in unleashing consumption, capital markets, and connectivity.

Yet the failures are equally stark. Nearly 45% of India’s workforce remains trapped in agriculture. Of the 6.3 crore enterprises in the country, only about 8 lakh pay Provident Fund contributions. Manufacturing employs just 11% of the workforce — a share comparable to post-industrial economies, not a developing country aspiring to mass employment. The core failure lies in non-farm job creation at scale.

The ideological roots of India’s employment problem

At the heart of this failure, the argument goes, is ideology — specifically a suspicion of entrepreneurship rooted in zero-sum thinking. Research by economist “Stefanie Stantcheva” shows that across Western democracies, both left-wing and right-wing ideologies often share a common belief: that wealth creation by some necessarily impoverishes others.

India embraced this worldview decades earlier, embedding it in policy choices in 1956, 1968, and 1976. While such suspicion may have been justified in pre-industrial societies where output was stagnant, it became counterproductive in a modern economy. Over the last two centuries, the global shift towards entrepreneurship-led growth has expanded world GDP by roughly 1,600% and dramatically improved living standards.

Why entrepreneurship is not the enemy of equity

The persistence of poverty that could be alleviated through enterprise-led growth, the argument suggests, is itself a form of structural violence. Yet public discourse continues to paint entrepreneurs as predators rather than partners in nation-building. This nostalgia for outdated economic thinking has cost India millions of non-farm jobs.

Comparative experience shows that prosperity depends less on culture (fitrat) and more on ideas (falsafa) and choices (vikalp). Countries that embraced wealth creation as a social good succeeded; those that distrusted it stagnated.

Five ways India must rethink entrepreneurship

The essay outlines five provocative shifts in thinking that India needs if it is to generate mass employment outside agriculture.

• “To get rich is glorious”: Poverty eradication is impossible without wealth creation. Garibi Hatao cannot succeed without Ameeri Banao.
• “Some people will get rich before others”: Reducing inequality by destroying wealth does not reduce poverty; it merely equalises scarcity.
• “Cross the river by feeling the stones”: Policy experimentation and calibrated risk-taking beat rigid rulebooks and bureaucratic overreach.
• “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white”: Pragmatism must trump ideology — whether growth comes from services or manufacturing, domestic firms or foreign capital.
• “When you open a window, some flies get in”: Fraud and failure are not arguments against enterprise; over-criminalisation of economic activity causes self-inflicted damage.

China, America, and the global warning signs

These ideas draw inspiration from “Deng Xiaoping”, even as the author makes clear there is no desire to emulate China’s political system. Ironically, China under “Xi Jinping” is now rolling back many of Deng’s pragmatic reforms, just as the U.S. under “Donald Trump” questions globalisation, immigration, and public investment in science.

While predictions of imminent collapse in both systems have so far proved premature, economist “Gita Gopinath” warns that a global crash could wipe out $35 trillion in wealth. For India, the lesson is clear: the best insurance against global turmoil is strong domestic entrepreneurship and technological capacity.

Reform 2026 and the unfinished agenda

The Prime Minister’s reform vision for 2026 reflects this urgency — focusing on deregulation, decriminalisation, digitisation, decentralisation, and democratic accountability of the administrative state. Initiatives such as Jan Vishwas and its proposed successors aim to reduce compliance burdens, rationalise penalties, and restore trust between the state and enterprise.

The aspiration echoes the 1961 song from “Hum Hindustani” — “Naye daur mein likhenge nayi kahani”. But writing a new economic story requires more than policy tweaks; it demands a fundamental shift in how India views entrepreneurship.

Looking forward by revising how we think

Reaching the next stage of India’s economic journey will depend less on repeating the successes of 1991 and more on confronting its blind spots. Rethinking entrepreneurship — not as a necessary evil but as a social good — may be the precondition for finally delivering mass prosperity. At 35, the reforms need not just celebration, but reinvention.